Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 7:00 PM

On Sunday, March 25, 2012, at 7:00 PM, at Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, ARTS AT TENRI continues its fifth season of presenting chamber music traditions from both Europe and Japan with a concert featuring eighteen-year-old pianist, Drew Petersen. The program includes works by Beethoven, Messiaen, and Liszt.

Intermission

Award winning eighteen-year-old pianist, Drew Petersen, has performed solo and concerto recitals in both Europe and the United States. He was presented in performances at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall at the ages of five and six. Among his other performances are recitals at the Musica e Arte Festival in Tolentino, Italy, Verbier Festival in Verbier, Switzerland, Euro Music Festival in Leipzig, Germany, as well as performances in New York City at Steinway Hall, the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Donnell Library and Greenwich House of Music. In 2003, Drew was presented by Steinway & Sons for their 150th Anniversary in a solo recital.

In 2006, Drew was heard on NPR’s radio program “From the Top” featuring the nation’s most gifted young classical musicians. In 2008 Drew won both the Manhattan School of Music Concerto Competition and the Yonkers Philharmonic Concerto Competition. In 2009 he won First Prize in the Friday Woodmere Young Artists Competition and he was featured multiple times on the McGraw-Hill “Young Artists Showcase,” hosted by Robert Sherman and aired on New York’s WQXR. In 2009, 2010, and 2011 he received scholarships from the Chopin Foundation of the United States for rendering stylistic interpretations of a variety of Chopin’s solo piano works. In 2010, Drew was a prize winner in the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition in New York City and was the recipient of the Jan Gorbaty Award for outstanding interpretations of music of Polish composers Chopin and Szymanowski. Drew also received recognition in the NY Chopin Competition winning him a recital at Symphony Space in Manhattan on March 22, 2012. In March 2011, he won second place in The Hilton Head Young Artists International Piano Competition.

Drew also enjoys chamber music and won the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s competition in May 2005 as a member of a piano trio and in summer 2008 was heard live on French radio, France Musique, as a member of a chamber group.

As a cultural leader in music, Drew has collaborated with Young Audiences NY presenting performances in NY City Public Schools and was the soloist with the Westchester Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Paul Dunkel, for the “Mozart and Me” educational program for 4000 school children in Westchester County, NY. Drew has also been a featured performer on the PBS program, “From the Top Live from Carnegie Hall.”
In July 2004, at the age of ten, Drew was presented in his own recital as part of the Music Festival of the Hamptons in Bridgehampton, NY and was then invited back in July 2005 to perform a Mozart Piano Concerto with Maestro Lukas Foss conducting for the opening night gala. Drew became the focus of a documentary titled “Just Normal” leading up to this performance which was produced and aired on Plum TV.

Drew has participated in several summer music festivals including the Music Festival of the Hamptons, Meadowmount, Tanglewood, Verbier and the Euro Music Festival Academy in Leipzig, Germany. In summer 2008, Drew was a participant in the Verbier Festival Academy where he studied with Claude Frank, Menahem Pressler and Gabor Takacs-Nagy. At 14 years of age, Drew was the recipient of the Verbier Festival Academy Tabor Piano Award 2008 and was invited to return to Verbier’s selective academy in summer 2011.

Drew Petersen began piano lessons at the age of five and has studied with David Bradshaw, Diane Battersby and Miyoko Lotto. By the age of 10, Drew began conducting under the tutelage of Maestro Jonathan Strasser and Maestro David Gilbert. Drew has been selected and has participated in master classes with Lang Lang, Emmanuel Ax, Claude Frank, Menahem Pressler and André Michel Schub.

Drew currently studies with Jerome Lowenthal at The Juilliard School while he is concurrently earning his BLA degree from Harvard University Extension School.